Check out the plunging housing starts in December.
 
The bad news for home goods retailers got worse on Thursday as the Commerce Department announced a sharper-than-expected 14.2-
percent decline in U.S. housing starts, pushing  them to their lowest level in more than 16 years.
 
“Builders are in trouble. They have a lot of inventory. They decided to cut back on their starts and that’s going to crimp the GDP,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist, Fact and Opinion Economics in New York.
 
What is bad for builders is also bad for retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s, which have been rocked by the housing crises. Other retailers have also felt the pinch as the sluggish U.S. economy has hurt spending.
 
“Demand for merchandise for the home will continue to be negatively impacted by the weak housing market,” Rosalind Wells, chief economist for the National Retail Federation, said earlier this week.
 
Some analysts have argued that the home-related stocks have fallen so far that they are bargains at this point, even if it will take some time for them to recover.
 
Gary Balter, analyst at Credit Suisse, lifted Home Depot, Lowe’s and Bed, Bath & Beyond to “outperform” on Monday.
 
But the numbers today show it could take extra help for the housing crisis to work its way out. Perhaps a construction charity? How about “Habitat for Home Depot?”
 
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